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Most residential exterior doors swing in. Some swing out and have the hinges exposed. The bad guys will take advantage of this.

Last week I was refinishing some exterior doors and needed to find some Interlocking Security Stud hinges. Ace sells them online and by catalog, but in quantities of one. At 4 bucks a pop. You really need two per door. Most commercial doors swing out. The primary reason is floor space. You
loose a lot of square footage having a door swing in as well as needing
to open the door after you have sold your customers bags full of
stuff.

The photo on the right shows one of these type of hinges. It has a hole on one side and stud stamped out of the body on the other side.

When the door is closed, the stud locks the hinge in place so even if the hinge pin is removed, or the barrel is cut off, the hinge is locked in place making breaking in much harder.

These used to be available in hardware stores next to regular hinges in the most popular residential sizes. Residential and Commercial hinges are different animals. I won't detail the differences as you probably have other things to do and this post would run for days if I did. Suffice to say. "I know things about Hinges".

I will mention the set screw type and the fast riveted pin types will both fail to with a guy armed with a battery powered die grinder with a grinding wheel. Cut through the hinge barrel, the set screw and fast riveted pin types are laying on the ground, and your stuff is on its way to a fence.

They still make them, but the orange and blue box stores don't carry them. Nor do the bigger chain hardware stores or commercial hardware stores here in Phoenix, the 6th or 8th largest major city in the country. They are more expensive, but so is your stuff.

The 3 Dollar Solution

I went to Clyde Hardware, a local Builders Hardware store(which is a commercial hardware supply house), which doesn't carry them either, but turned me on to these.

These are CASTLE Maximum Security Hinge Pins. 3 Dollars. One package does a door. Compare that with the Ace hinge above which will set you back 4 bucks each, really needing two, and the extra mortising you will probably need to do as the are square corners and your hinges have rounded corners.

A side note here: your hinges have rounded corners as the manufacturers of pre hung door use routers to mortise the doors and jambs. Square corners require more work.

Drop dead simple. Mark the door, drill two 1/2'' holes, tap them into place and you are done.

The exposed pin is a 1/2'' long making it almost impossible to remove the door. The bad guys will have to destroy the door entirely to get passed these.

And did I mention cheap? It's all about saving the Benjamins.

Here is the finished detail.

An elegant solution to security on exterior door. Works on most residential steel doors also as they are clad front and back and the hinge and jamb are exposed wood.